From las8323@rs175174.ks.boeing.com Fri Oct 19 06:47:22 2001
Subject:Re: Sorta OT: DX-7!!!

Roger,
As a long time DX user (one of the first) and still own a TX816 and
two TX802's, I'm not foreign to the product. Being a crotchety old
fart, I'm not foreign to speaking my mind....

> First of all the DX-7 was made also as a hammond-clone

Sorry, no sale... 1st, the CX-3 preceded the DX, 2nd, EVERY analog
synth of the time was touted as a "hammond replacement" and some
were not too bad.. exspecially considering that, by then, the role
of hammond was in a pronounced decay. 3rd, the last Alogrithm
arrangement just *happens* to be in parallel. This is no more than
topological convenience but as the unit was so very cryptic in its
controls, it was easily the most "human" in scope. Many
enthusiastic salesmen were quick to make the obvious functional
comparisons with a Hammond and tried to introduce programming
accordingly. Real DX'ers know that the "good" Hammond patches
(such as they are) are found in more intense Algorithms.

>
> I think that it's a classic, afterall it was the first keyboard to use
> breath control
> Roger

Classic? Certainly. There are still sounds, albeit esoteric in
context, that only the DX can accomplish. Do they sound "better"?
Well, not always to my ears. But there's lots and lots of useful
mat'l in a DX (or 8times in a TX :-) Jillions and jillions of patches
out there (in metric, that'd be 39.37 millizillion).

Remember that the DX stormed the scene with really fast envelopes. EP,
bells, xylo, and percussives were all nigh impossible to do well in
the analog domain; as was polyphony to an extent. IMO, the only reason
they sold in numbers was that cartridge! NOT "the sound". The DX-9
had "the sound" (compared to analogs) but the tape interface was a
TOTAL MESS! The cart made the DX, IMNSHO.

Shortly after the intro of the DX, it became clear that the staple synth
sound of the time -- strings and/or brass -- was never going to be
happening. Rumors of the HolyGrail of all sounds ever -- the
acoustic piano -- were to be had, but of course those never happened.
So rigs were quite commonly setup with a DX and a complementary
analog like Prophet-5/600/etc or Ober-sumthin'or Rolands.

And, to me, the Yamaha DX-7 STILL has one of the nicest keybeds
ever produced. One of my biggest downsides was that with all the
nifty digital elex, then us solder monkeys couldn't go poke around
and "improve" things at will. Sorta kept it sterile on two
fronts, really.

And, speaking of sterile, IMO the BC was almost a necessary evil.
The sound, and Yam knew it, was soooo very sterile that anything
"natural" was going to be tough. The more mod paths the better.
Hey, it's just a few more lines of code. Polyphony meant both
hands were busy, already had sus and vol peds (shipped with!) so
BC was about the only thing left. Still in all, th eDX never
really excelled in the orchestral staple sounds.

Almost everything does almost anything better than a DX, these
days. In the same way that Orville and Wilbur's plane is out
done. But there's still some interested users. Old farts,
mostly.

good thread (whew)

Larry